GIGABYTE GA-H61N-USB3 LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great board! Have bought 3 or 4 of these now. Excellent choice for an ITX build. Warranty is good. Express Recovery 2 is a very useful tool, especially for those that build and sell these systems. It allows you to create a recovery partition, much like places like Dell or HP would. I have been using that tool on nearly every system I build using a Gigabyte board. Probably the past 50 systems or so, been a wonderful tool. As for this board? HDMI out. PCIe16x slot. Small size. Bundled with an i3 or higher processor, and it will rip though about anything. Most of the ones I build have either dual core Cels, or Pentiums, but a couple of them have had i3's, etc. 8-16GB as well. 500GB drives or bigger. One even has Blu Ray setup on it. Really awesome little systems. Using Inwin ITX towers with these.

Cons: Well, with any ITX build, you are working with limited space. Take your time, plan how you want to assemble. Watch installing the 24pin power connector. You WILL flex the board too much if you just shove it on there. I tend to work it down gently, by rocking it back and forth (along the length of the connector) as it goes down so the board doesn't over flex. Its possible that you could crack off a component if you are too forceful.

Overall Review: Did have a DOA once, but Newegg came through as always, so no worries. My customers are starting to want these smaller computers more and more, now that they are more powerful yet still in a small package. Inwin ITX Tower cases (50 dollar price point) Pareema 8GB kit (4gbx2 1333) 500GB WD SATA Samsung, LG, or Asus DVD drives, Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combos Makes for a nice simple home compute build.

Pros: Very Durable, Small, Easy Setup,

Cons: None

Overall Review: Mini-ITX board that runs osx 24/7 . Runs Great and as stable as a real Mac.

Pros: I bought this motherboard because it was better than the economy boards and not as expensive as some to the higher priced ones. I So far have not been disappointed. A bit overpowered for my server, but it works great and boots really fast unlike my other desktops with about the same speed processor. I like the boards color and though I had a time with some to the connections being under my power supply, it is a good motherboard.

Cons: The only think I think I did not like about the mother board was the lack of a speaker connector and no internal USB3 connector. I did not notice that originally or I might have bought a different board. Still I was able to get around it by routing one the external USB3 ports to the internal cable of my case so I could have a USB3 port on the front.

Pros: Has USB 3.0 connectivity for the back panel IO. Cheap. Good placement of inputs. Works as advertised with my Intel Xeon E3 1270.

Cons: No USB 3.0 inputs for front panel headers, but at least it came with USB 3.0 inputs on the back panel IO.

Overall Review: This is a very general mobo. I use it as a gaming/video editing build. Since it is cheap and entry level, there isn't room for many upgrades. There are only 2 Sata slots so I will probably use both for storage instead of 1 storage and 1 optical drive. Overall, I'm happy with this mobo. If I could do it over, I would definitely have payed the extra $30 or so to buy a mobo with more features/upgradeability; but that is not a knock on this mobo. For what it is advertised to do and it's price, it is a very good mobo!

Pros: I previously mentioned that analog audio was hissing. But after further testing it was only from the front ports. Chances are it is my cheapo case which is at fault.

Cons: only 2x internal sata ports

Pros: Followed the Customac template and built a Mac Mini hackintosh. First installed Snow Leopard without issue, patched it to 10.6.8 and then upgraded to Mountain Lion. Geekbench score runs around 9700. Fits well in a Silverstone Sugo SG05 case. Decent amount of external ports for a mini ITX motherboard, layout is acceptable.

Cons: Didn't buy it from Newegg as the price + i5-2500K was much higher here than the deal at the local Mxxxxxxx shop :( Couldn't boot off a USB stick for some reason, but creating the Mountain Lion Unibeast install on an external USB hard disk worked fine. Would have been nice to have an additional SATA connector as 2 is fairly skimpy. No wireless or Bluetooth built in but I knew this. Also with the H61 chipset you can't overclock with the multiplier, despite the fact that you can set it in the bios. Not fiddling with the base clock.

Overall Review: Configuration for a nearly "out of the box" inexpensive Hackintosh experience: H61N-USB3 i5-2500K or i3-2105, stock cooler is fine 4, 8 or 16GB DDR3 1333 SATA disk, either Sony Optiarc DVD drive (preferred) integrated HD3000 graphics or nVidia Kepler-based graphics card (I'm using the new GT 640, pretty cheap and decent) Shell out $29 for Snow Leopard (have to special order it for pickup at an Apple Store or mailed to you) Shell out $19 for Mountain Lion. So far I'm very happy with the build!

Pros: Works great for a CustoMac, as well as being well made in general. In dealing with such a small form factor, I was worried about getting a product that wasn't as well made as some of the larger boards with more features. So far this board works fantastic and has plenty of the features of larger boards, without being of that form factor.

Cons: No Sata III support, unfortunately. For the price and what I'm using it for, not a big deal. For some reason I'm unable to get the board to switch out of AHCI mode, and thus unable to install Windows. The drivers supplied by Gigabyte aren't working with the Windows installer, so it is a good thing it isn't of top-priority for me.

Overall Review: I'm using the Silverstone 1156 low profile cooler instead of the stock Intel cooler, and I don't know if any other low-profile coolers would work. The board is cramped versus larger form factors, and the default heatsink design is just about the largest the board can accomodate without going taller, which in most ITX cases isn't possible.

Pros: I have been using these boards in desktop systems for over a year and they have performed flawlessly. no issues with installation or configuration

Cons: none